PKK and Turkey

Colman McCarthy's strongly worded commentary (March 31) is full of misrepresentations and errors. The PKK does not fight for Kurdish rights. They fight for the establishment of a Marxist state on a piece of the Turkish land. In the name of their cause they have been butchering Kurdish men, women and children in southeastern Turkey for the last few years.

Turkey's recent incursion into Iraq in pursuit of PKK gunmen was for the preservation of its territorial integrity and the protection of the innocent Turkish Kurds of southeastern Turkey. Turkey, just as the U.S., is a melting pot. It is a country targeted by immigrants escaping from persecution throughout its history. Jews from Spain, Muslims from many lands such as Bulgaria, the Crimea and Yugoslavia all fled to Turkey when they faced extermination in their own countries. The latest example of this was the 500,000 Kurds who escaped from the wrath of Saddam Hussein of Iraq just before the Gulf War. All these people, irrespective of their ethnic origins, have full rights as Turkish citizens in their new country, but they do not have the right to participate in terrorist activities aimed at the territorial integrity of Turkey.